Comments may not work properly during the transition this weekend. Just be aware, you may have to post twice if they are lost during this transition period.
Update: Some of these issues should be resolved today, and instructions will be forthcoming for those having issues.
Saturday, October 31, 2024
Friday, October 30, 2024
New Chinese naval flotilla to Aden
It's set, they are sending another Flotilla to Aden to replace 529 and 530 according to this article. This is the 4th task force to Aden.
I guess they really have no choice but to keep on sending after the major hijacking news. 525 and 526 are the only frigates of the 054 class and they are from the East Sea Fleet. The same replenishment ship will be there since the last flotilla was also from the East Sea Fleet.
ZHOUSHAN, Zhejiang Province, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- A new Chinese naval flotilla was deployed to the Gulf of Aden and waters off the coast of Somalia on Friday to protect merchant vessels against rampant pirates that still hold a Chinese ship for ransom.
The flotilla of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has been the fourth task force of its kind that China has sent to the region since the end of last year.
Missile frigates FFG-525 Ma'anshan and FFG-526 Wenzhou will relieve the FFG-529 Zhoushan and FFG-530 Xuzhou from the PLA Navy's third flotilla which have patrolled the area since June.
The new warships will join Qiandaohu, a supply ship, which has been on duty in the region for about three months. The fourth flotilla will have a crew of more than 700, including a special force unit and two ship-borne helicopters.
They would actively take part in international humanitarian rescue missions, said Liu Xiaojiang, the Navy's political commissar.
A Chinese coal-carrying vessel "De Xin Hai" with 25 crew members on board was kidnapped by pirates about 1,000 sea miles away from the patrolling area of Chinese warships in the Indian Ocean.
So far all the 25 crew members have been identified as Chinese citizens by the shipping company they worked for. The Ministry of Transport is working on the release of the ship.
It is not immediately known whether the new naval task force will bear a rescue mission for "De Xin Hai", but the two Chinese frigates currently patrolling the area have intensified the frequency of surveillance by shipborne helicopters, skiffs and the special force unit for merchant vessels passing by.
China made an unprecedented move by sending three warships to the Gulf on Dec. 26 last year in the first overseas escort mission for merchant vessels.
The PLA Navy warships have escorted hundreds of domestic and foreign vessels since the first flotilla arrived in the region.
I guess they really have no choice but to keep on sending after the major hijacking news. 525 and 526 are the only frigates of the 054 class and they are from the East Sea Fleet. The same replenishment ship will be there since the last flotilla was also from the East Sea Fleet.
Time To Look Ahead
If something happened the last two weeks, I probably missed it. I have been 'in the bunker' putting in the work hours while I have hours remaining on my contract as I lead into professional uncertainty in the near future. As regulars should know by now, I embrace challenges associated with change; fear of the unknown is for the people who don't take risks nor take the chances in life necessary to earn the rewards of risk.
My contributions on the blog over the past several weeks (if not much longer) have been rather pathetic. My apologizes, but thankfully the blog has been in good hands with the other authors. Two points:
The Future Surface Combatant is the heart of the discussion leading into the next decade. We will be building 2 submarines a year for the next several years, that will not change. The Navy will be replacing the SSBNs next decade, that will not change. The Navy will be building 15 new Littoral Combat Ships between FY11-FY15, and that will not change.
Everything else is a question mark. Everything is on the table. It is not a question of what the US Navy will look like in the 21st century, it is a question of what they will be doing, and how they will be doing it. It is time to begin blogging the discussion how the Navy will fight, and see if the doctrinal ideas hold up to public examination and scrutiny. I suspect we will see plenty of resistance to change; there always is.
My contributions on the blog over the past several weeks (if not much longer) have been rather pathetic. My apologizes, but thankfully the blog has been in good hands with the other authors. Two points:
- The blog comment system will change very soon, hopefully by Sunday. People who leave unprofessional content in my comments will no longer be tolerated.
- I have never been so excited to write on several subjects, and November is loaded with so much to discuss it may carry well into the rest of the year. Some have suggested a public forum isn't really the best place to discuss some of these emerging concepts, ideas, and doctrines; but I intend to show people they are incorrect and that the larger community of experts have plenty of good ideas to contribute. Be thoughtful and wise about contributions, because I assure you over the next few months many important folks will be reading.
SEC. 125. PROCUREMENT PROGRAMS FOR FUTURE NAVAL SURFACE COMBATANTS.This is a very interesting inclusion in the FY 2010 Defense Bill. The Future Surface Combatant, not the restart of the DDG-51, is now the major focus of Congress. If I was taking bets, I would read this as saying CG(X), CG-47, DDG-1000, and DDG-51 will all be replaced by a new large, modular future surface combatant yet to make the design board, and DDG-51s will be filling the gap until that program gets off the ground.
(a) Limitation on Availability of Funds Pending Reports About Surface Combatant Shipbuilding Programs- The Secretary of the Navy may not obligate or expend funds for the construction of, or advanced procurement of materials for, a surface combatant to be constructed after fiscal year 2011 until the Secretary has submitted to Congress each of the following:
(1) An acquisition strategy for such surface combatants that has been approved by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.
(2) Certification that the Joint Requirements Oversight Council--
(A) has been briefed on the acquisition strategy to procure such surface combatants; and
(B) has concurred that such strategy is the best preferred approach to deliver required capabilities to address future threats, as reflected in the latest assessment by the defense intelligence community.
(3) A verification by, and conclusions of, an independent review panel that, in evaluating the program or programs concerned, the Secretary of the Navy considered each of the following:
(A) Modeling and simulation, including war gaming conclusions regarding combat effectiveness for the selected ship platforms as compared to other reasonable alternative approaches.
(B) Assessments of platform operational availability.
(C) Life cycle costs, including vessel manning levels, to accomplish missions.
(D) The differences in cost and schedule arising from the need to accommodate new sensors and weapons in surface combatants to be constructed after fiscal year 2011 to counter the future threats referred to in paragraph (2), when compared with the cost and schedule arising from the need to accommodate sensors and weapons on surface combatants as contemplated by the 2009 shipbuilding plan for the vessels concerned.
(4) The conclusions of a joint review by the Secretary of the Navy and the Director of the Missile Defense Agency setting forth additional requirements for investment in Aegis ballistic missile defense beyond the number of DDG-51 and CG-47 vessels planned to be equipped for this mission area in the budget of the President for fiscal year 2010 (as submitted to Congress pursuant to section 1105 of title 31, United States Code).
(b) Future Surface Combatant Acquisition Strategy- Not later than the date upon which the President submits to Congress the budget for fiscal year 2012 (as so submitted), the Secretary of the Navy shall submit to the congressional defense committees an update to the open architecture report to Congress that reflects the Navy's combat systems acquisition plans for the surface combatants to be procured in fiscal year 2012 and fiscal years thereafter.
(c) Naval Surface Fire Support- Not later than 120 days after the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Navy shall submit to the congressional defense committees an update to the March 2006 Report to Congress on Naval Surface Fire Support. The update shall identify how the Department of Defense intends to address any shortfalls between required naval surface fire support capability and the plan of the Navy to provide that capability. The update shall include addenda by the Chief of Naval Operations and Commandant of the Marine Corps, as was the case in the 2006 report.
(d) Technology Roadmap for Future Surface Combatants and Fleet Modernization-
(1) IN GENERAL- Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Navy shall develop a plan to incorporate into surface combatants constructed after 2011, and into fleet modernization programs, the technologies developed for the DDG-1000 destroyer and the DDG-51 and CG-47 Aegis ships, including technologies and systems designed to achieve significant manpower savings.
(2) SCOPE OF PLAN- The plan required by paragraph (1) shall include sufficient detail for systems and subsystems to ensure that the plan--
(A) avoids redundant development for common functions;
(B) reflects implementation of Navy plans for achieving an open architecture for all naval surface combat systems; and
(C) fosters competition.
(e) Definitions- In this section:
(1) The term `2009 shipbuilding plan' means the 30-year shipbuilding plan submitted to Congress pursuant to section 231, title 10, United States Code, together with the budget of the President for fiscal year 2009 (as submitted to Congress pursuant to section 1105 of title 31, United States Code).
(2) The term `surface combatant' means a cruiser, a destroyer, or any naval vessel, excluding Littoral Combat Ships, under a program currently designated as a future surface combatant program.
The Future Surface Combatant is the heart of the discussion leading into the next decade. We will be building 2 submarines a year for the next several years, that will not change. The Navy will be replacing the SSBNs next decade, that will not change. The Navy will be building 15 new Littoral Combat Ships between FY11-FY15, and that will not change.
Everything else is a question mark. Everything is on the table. It is not a question of what the US Navy will look like in the 21st century, it is a question of what they will be doing, and how they will be doing it. It is time to begin blogging the discussion how the Navy will fight, and see if the doctrinal ideas hold up to public examination and scrutiny. I suspect we will see plenty of resistance to change; there always is.
Dr. Colin Gray on the Teaching of Strategy
I'm about a third of the way through Dr. Gray's "Schools for Strategy: Teaching Strategy for 21st Century Conflict" (download available here), and I'm finding it quite interesting--perhaps you might too.
One paragraph (following a brief discussion of COIN and CT) caught my eye:
"Because we believe that we understand
the conflicts of the 2000s, with their highlighting of the
phenomenon of the “accidental guerrilla,” we need to
be alert to the danger that our new found confidence
will prove largely misplaced should we assume it to
be authoritative for the conflicts of the years to come."
Bryan McGrath
One paragraph (following a brief discussion of COIN and CT) caught my eye:
"Because we believe that we understand
the conflicts of the 2000s, with their highlighting of the
phenomenon of the “accidental guerrilla,” we need to
be alert to the danger that our new found confidence
will prove largely misplaced should we assume it to
be authoritative for the conflicts of the years to come."
Bryan McGrath
Thursday, October 29, 2024
EMP Awareness Advocacy
A couple weeks ago I published at article at Right Web on EMP awareness ddvocacy, the idea that an electromagnetic pulse attack presents a clear and immediate danger to the United States. I've received several good responses to the article, including one correspondent who discussed the wide variation in EMP preparation onboard new US naval vessels, and another who posed some serious and difficult technical questions about the feasibility of any EMP attack. The science of EMP is quite complex and is the subject of bitter disagreement among experts. I think it would be fair to say that there is no clear scientific consensus on a) the amount of damage that a concerted EMP attack could cause to the United States, or b) the size of the nuclear warhead(s) needed to cause a substantial EMP effect. One key reason for this uncertainty is simply that there are hard limits on what can be learned about the effect of EMP in the absence of an actual EMP attack, and certainly in the absence of atmospheric nuclear weapon testing.
Because of the limitations of the science, I'd like to focus on the strategic question. EMP awareness advocates argue that an EMP attack provides the perfect opportunity for China, a rogue state, or a terrorist organization to strike a devastating blow against the United States. Rather than simply destroying one city, the story goes, an EMP attack could wipe out the entire US economy, and even (according to the wildest estimate) lead to the deaths of 90% of the US population within a year. The EMP attack probably wouldn't eliminate the ability of the United States to respond, but because of the initial lack of lethality, the story goes, it would be difficult to launch a devastating nuclear counterstrike. While the US could respond with its own EMP attack, China and the various rogue states have economies less dependent on modern technology than that of the United States, and accordingly could weather a counterattack.
Alright, deep breath. Here are the parts of the story that I find strategically implausible:
Now, I suppose you could argue that, in spite of the fact that such an attack is unlikely, the United States should be prepared to counter all manner of threats. I don't find this argument terribly plausible; any strategic analysis ranks potential threats, and preparedness for extremely unlikely events is discounted. More importantly, as noted above the United States already has the capacity to respond to, and accordingly to deter, the most likely forms of EMP attack.
All of this makes it terribly difficult for me to take EMP awareness advocacy seriously as anything other than as a front for arguments in favor of missile defense and preventive war. There are plausible arguments in favor of both, but neither involve electromagnetic pulse. As I suggest in the article, the weak science feeds hysteria-mongering; since no one knows exactly what might happen, advocates are emboldened to make claims about barge launched MRBMs and the death of 90% of the American population within a year. The appearance of EMP in several major Hollywood films (The Matrix trilogy, Ocean's Eleven, Goldeneye) would seem to make EMP fertile ground for political fearmongering.
What's perhaps most interesting, however, is that the EMP hype has failed utterly to catch fire. The EMPACT Niagara Conference was covered by approximately no one, despite the presence of Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. That a pair of GOP heavy hitters could show up a a conference and still earn very little coverage tells you something about how seriously the media takes EMP. Moreover, this disdain isn't limited to the mainstream media. I couldn't find any articles at the New York Post, the Washington Times, or even Fox News on the Niagara conference. I'll let an editor at the Weekly Standard, with whom I spoke in service of the article, give the final word:
Because of the limitations of the science, I'd like to focus on the strategic question. EMP awareness advocates argue that an EMP attack provides the perfect opportunity for China, a rogue state, or a terrorist organization to strike a devastating blow against the United States. Rather than simply destroying one city, the story goes, an EMP attack could wipe out the entire US economy, and even (according to the wildest estimate) lead to the deaths of 90% of the US population within a year. The EMP attack probably wouldn't eliminate the ability of the United States to respond, but because of the initial lack of lethality, the story goes, it would be difficult to launch a devastating nuclear counterstrike. While the US could respond with its own EMP attack, China and the various rogue states have economies less dependent on modern technology than that of the United States, and accordingly could weather a counterattack.
Alright, deep breath. Here are the parts of the story that I find strategically implausible:
- That any adversary could believe that an EMP attack on the United States would not incur retaliation. If the Chinese launched several ICBMs as part of an EMP attack against the United States, how could they be certain that a devastating American counterstrike wouldn't be delivered even before any damage was done? The same goes for any rogue state; the idea that an EMP attack wouldn't incur retaliation assumes an extraordinary level of risk acceptance on the attacking state. There may be other reasons to believe that rogue states are immune to deterrence, but the idea that EMP is key to this belief seems implausible.
- That any adversary would willingly endure the impact of an EMP counterstrike. China hasn't spent the last thirty years developing a modern economy to risk its destruction overnight. It may in some abstract sense be true that the Chinese could weather an EMP assault better than we, but such an attack would still leave the Chinese economy a global basket case. Same goes for any rogue state.
- The idea that a rogue state or terrorist group would use one of its small, scarce atomic warheads in an attack with an extraordinarily low chance of success, and with extraordinarily high costs whether the attack succeeded or failed. The technical details matter here; EMP awareness advocates have argued that a 12-20kt warhead could, if properly used, have a massive EMP effect. There is approximately zero evidence to back this up, but then it's hard to prove that it couldn't happen. Awareness advocates would have us believe, however, that Iran, North Korea, or a terrorist group would be so confident of the success of the attack that they would use one of their very few weapons to launch an attack for which they have done no testing. To reiterate, the story is that a terrorist group would prefer to launch its nuke into the atmosphere on the chance that it could destroy US electronics, rather than use the weapon to attack a US city. I think that using the term "radically improbable" to describe this scenario is a bit of an understatement.
Now, I suppose you could argue that, in spite of the fact that such an attack is unlikely, the United States should be prepared to counter all manner of threats. I don't find this argument terribly plausible; any strategic analysis ranks potential threats, and preparedness for extremely unlikely events is discounted. More importantly, as noted above the United States already has the capacity to respond to, and accordingly to deter, the most likely forms of EMP attack.
All of this makes it terribly difficult for me to take EMP awareness advocacy seriously as anything other than as a front for arguments in favor of missile defense and preventive war. There are plausible arguments in favor of both, but neither involve electromagnetic pulse. As I suggest in the article, the weak science feeds hysteria-mongering; since no one knows exactly what might happen, advocates are emboldened to make claims about barge launched MRBMs and the death of 90% of the American population within a year. The appearance of EMP in several major Hollywood films (The Matrix trilogy, Ocean's Eleven, Goldeneye) would seem to make EMP fertile ground for political fearmongering.
What's perhaps most interesting, however, is that the EMP hype has failed utterly to catch fire. The EMPACT Niagara Conference was covered by approximately no one, despite the presence of Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. That a pair of GOP heavy hitters could show up a a conference and still earn very little coverage tells you something about how seriously the media takes EMP. Moreover, this disdain isn't limited to the mainstream media. I couldn't find any articles at the New York Post, the Washington Times, or even Fox News on the Niagara conference. I'll let an editor at the Weekly Standard, with whom I spoke in service of the article, give the final word:
No…I don't go for that EMP stuff. Kind of more interested in dangerous scenarios that might actually happen. It's a f****** ludicrous scenario.
I'm an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky.
Wednesday, October 28, 2024
DDH-144 JS Kurama
The news (and the rest of the web) has been reporting on the collision between the JMSDF Helicopter Defense Destroyer DDH-144 Kurama and a South Korean container vessel.
Not being a professional operator, I'll leave commentary on the ship operations to those more knowledgeable than I. I will note that the official cause of the fire which seems to have caused the majority of the bow damage to the Kurama is the ignition of a paint locker during the collision. In other words, non-combat volatiles stored on the ship managed to mostly melt a large chunk of the bow area.
A sobering reminder of the energies and risks that seagoing ships deal with on a daily basis, quibbles over storage methods and the like notwithstanding. It's also a troubling commentary on the firefighting status aboard. I will be looking with interest to see if there were material or procedural errors aboard which allowed things to progress this far. Although the fire started in the midst of sudden, unexpected and traumatic events on board, that is practically the definition of some combat damage...
(I couldn't find an image of the post-collision ship that wasn't obviously copyrighted, but Google is your friend, there.)
Not being a professional operator, I'll leave commentary on the ship operations to those more knowledgeable than I. I will note that the official cause of the fire which seems to have caused the majority of the bow damage to the Kurama is the ignition of a paint locker during the collision. In other words, non-combat volatiles stored on the ship managed to mostly melt a large chunk of the bow area.
A sobering reminder of the energies and risks that seagoing ships deal with on a daily basis, quibbles over storage methods and the like notwithstanding. It's also a troubling commentary on the firefighting status aboard. I will be looking with interest to see if there were material or procedural errors aboard which allowed things to progress this far. Although the fire started in the midst of sudden, unexpected and traumatic events on board, that is practically the definition of some combat damage...
(I couldn't find an image of the post-collision ship that wasn't obviously copyrighted, but Google is your friend, there.)
High End Cooperative Maritime Relationships
As many readers know, the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower places a premium on cooperative maritime relationships. All too often though, these relationships are thought about on the low-end, and in many cases, there is a certain "patron/client" feel to how they are described. Put another way, some see "cooperative maritime relationships" and "building partner capacity" as the same thing--which they are not. The recent response to piracy in the Indian is a fine example of how they are not.
Still another example is on the high end--Maritime Ballistic Missile Defense. Today's news of a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force Destroyer's intercept of an MRBM target in the Pacific shows how such relationships can run the gamut from cooperative maritime security all the way to the most sophisticated technological combat capabilities afloat. The relationship must be mutually beneficial, it must allow the parties involved to participate in a manner meaningful to them, and it must be consistent with both parties' technology bases and resources.
Maritime Ballistic Missile Defense is an area around which the US Navy is building lasting operational relationships with considerable strategic value. In addition to Japan, other obvious partners are South Korea, Australia, India, the Gulf Nations, Israel, Turkey and NATO. Linking afloat units with enhanced land and space-based sensors and weapons could create regional missile defense networks into which units could plug and play as they came and went. As ballistic missiles continue to proliferate, a cooperative response--catalyzed by the US--seems a worthy response.
Bryan McGrath
Still another example is on the high end--Maritime Ballistic Missile Defense. Today's news of a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force Destroyer's intercept of an MRBM target in the Pacific shows how such relationships can run the gamut from cooperative maritime security all the way to the most sophisticated technological combat capabilities afloat. The relationship must be mutually beneficial, it must allow the parties involved to participate in a manner meaningful to them, and it must be consistent with both parties' technology bases and resources.
Maritime Ballistic Missile Defense is an area around which the US Navy is building lasting operational relationships with considerable strategic value. In addition to Japan, other obvious partners are South Korea, Australia, India, the Gulf Nations, Israel, Turkey and NATO. Linking afloat units with enhanced land and space-based sensors and weapons could create regional missile defense networks into which units could plug and play as they came and went. As ballistic missiles continue to proliferate, a cooperative response--catalyzed by the US--seems a worthy response.
Bryan McGrath
Tuesday, October 27, 2024
Project Valour-IT 2009
It is Project Valour-IT fund drive time. This year the fund drive will run through Veterans day. Sounds good to me.I have been involved with Soldiers Angels for several years now. Several years ago my wife emailed me one day and said "I adopted a soldier." I didn't really understand, so she sent me over to the Soldiers Angels website to look around. I've been involved ever since.
A little about Soldiers Angels and Valour-IT.
Soldiers' Angels is designated a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity by the IRS. Donations are tax-deductible and may be eligible for matching funds from donors' employers (ask your employer). Be sure to consult your tax advisor for further information. All funds received go directly to our wounded troops; 100% of your donation to Project Valour-IT will be used to purchase laptops and other technology that will support recovery and provide independence and freedom to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines.It isn't just laptops though, last year I was having a conversation during Monday Night Football with a friend who has two sons in the Marines. She was looking forward to Christmas, because her oldest was coming home. Their oldest was wounded in Iraq, had both of his hands shot. She told me what helped him the most was staying busy playing the full body activity games on the Wii, with his hands wrapped up and multiple surgeries required to get his wrists working again, it was all he could do to stay active. While surfing around the Soldiers Angels website this morning i noted they have recognized this technology for those purposes and the Wii is also a supported Soldiers Angels technology for supporting recovery. That Christmas, the local pub raised over $1500 to get that Marine some Wii gear. It made a difference in his life, and Soldiers Angels is in the business of making a difference in the lives of soldiers and Marines wounded in the wars.
All money donated to Project Valour-IT goes directly to the purchase and shipment of laptops and other technology for severely wounded service members. As of November 2008, Valour-IT has distributed over 2700 laptops to severely wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines across the country, and is now expanding its mission to include other technology that supports physical and psychological recovery.
Valour-IT accepts donations in any amount to support our mission, but also offers a sponsorship option for laptops. An individual or organization may sponsor a wounded soldier by completely funding the cost of a laptop and continuing to provide that soldier with personal support and encouragement throughout recovery. This has proved to be an excellent project for churches, groups of coworkers or friends, and members of community organizations such Boy Scouts.
Originally Valour-IT provided the voice-controlled software that accompanies the laptops, but now works closely with the Department of Defense Computer/electronic Accommodations Program (CAP): CAP supplies the adaptive software and Valour-IT provides the laptop. In addition, DoD caseworkers serve as Valour-IT’s “eyes and ears” at several medical centers, identifying patients in need of laptops and other technological support for their recovery.
If you have a blog, join the cause, spread the word, help raise some money for a good cause. If you have a few dollars to spare, you will be hard pressed to find a cause you could spend the money on more deserving than Project Valour-IT.
If you have donations to spare, click the widget at the top of the blog and lets beat the shit out of Army this year.
Monday, October 26, 2024
Rift Between Turkey and Israel Genuine, Serious
To be clear, there's no question that there's been a serious deterioration in defense ties between Turkey and Israel over the last several months. Last week's Defense News article details the drift, and includes explicit argument by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to the fact that popular pressure is limiting the extent to which Turkey can cooperate with Israel. The issue, rather, is whether the rupture represents a dispositional shift in Turkish foreign policy (Turkey abandoning the West for the camp of radical Islam), or whether it's simply the result of Turkish dissatisfaction with Israeli military and security policy. I lean rather heavily towards the latter interpretation; whatever the sins of the AKP, Turkey internally operates much more like a Western liberal democracy than any state associated with "radical Islam," and indeed Turkey's internal politics are more in line with liberal democracy (including especially reform of the role delegated to the military in a liberal democratic state) than they ever have before. The error made by Glick and others, in my view, is in the effort to derive domestic regime type from foreign policy; it is possible for Turkey (or France, or Germany) to be simultaneously democratic and queasy about the Gaza operation. Indeed, in Turkey's case I think that achieving any other outcome would be difficult.
Now, in the short run this means that military dominated regimes may be easier for the United States (and certainly Israel) to deal with. In the long run, however, I don't see that this policy has much of a future. You don't need to be a neoconservative to be deeply skeptical about a policy of maintaining authoritarian allies of convenience; such a policy is far more likely, in my view, to lead to events like the Iranian Revolution than is tolerance of parties like the AKP.
Now, in the short run this means that military dominated regimes may be easier for the United States (and certainly Israel) to deal with. In the long run, however, I don't see that this policy has much of a future. You don't need to be a neoconservative to be deeply skeptical about a policy of maintaining authoritarian allies of convenience; such a policy is far more likely, in my view, to lead to events like the Iranian Revolution than is tolerance of parties like the AKP.
I'm an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky.
1 CV, No Planes?
This is... bizarre.
So... some questions:
1. This seems to suggest that one CV would be permanently configured for F-35s, and the other for helicopters. Wouldn't it make more sense to give both ships a flexible configuration, given the inevitable downtime that carriers need? The Times article suggests that Prince of Wales will be the helicopter/commando carrier, which would "save" the RN the 600 million it would otherwise require to replace HMS Ocean.
2. Can the RN possibly justify the construction of Prince of Wales as a glorified amphibious assault ship?
3. What does this mean for the rest of the Royal Navy's procurement plans? Does it get anything back for giving up an airwing?
UPDATE: Correspondents (as well as commenters) are indicating that the answer to question #1 is "No." The Times article is wrong, by this account, to suggest that Prince of Wales will be permanently configured around commando and helicopter operations. Rather, the two ships are likely to trade off the F-35 air group. This makes much more sense, and does suggest that the revision is more modest than the initial reports implied.
With consummate ill-timing U.S. policy makers efforts to sustain a second-engine for the F-35 are met with claims that London is ready to ditch equipping its planned second carrier with the aircraft.
Britain’s “Sunday Times” claims the Royal Navy has “agreed to sacrifice” one of its two 65,000 ton aircraft carriers, instead saying the navy would use the ship only as a helicopter carrier. For good measure the story speculates only about 50 of the F-35 will be bought, to save on cost.
Given budgetary pressures cutting the initial number to 50 appears credible - it would provide enough aircraft to equip the first carrier with a strike wing, and also for training needs.
The notion of having the second 65,000-ton carrier and using it only for helicopters seems far less so.
So... some questions:
1. This seems to suggest that one CV would be permanently configured for F-35s, and the other for helicopters. Wouldn't it make more sense to give both ships a flexible configuration, given the inevitable downtime that carriers need? The Times article suggests that Prince of Wales will be the helicopter/commando carrier, which would "save" the RN the 600 million it would otherwise require to replace HMS Ocean.
2. Can the RN possibly justify the construction of Prince of Wales as a glorified amphibious assault ship?
3. What does this mean for the rest of the Royal Navy's procurement plans? Does it get anything back for giving up an airwing?
UPDATE: Correspondents (as well as commenters) are indicating that the answer to question #1 is "No." The Times article is wrong, by this account, to suggest that Prince of Wales will be permanently configured around commando and helicopter operations. Rather, the two ships are likely to trade off the F-35 air group. This makes much more sense, and does suggest that the revision is more modest than the initial reports implied.
I'm an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky.
Friday, October 23, 2024
Observation
Have you been to Yahoo today?
When you build a ship that looks like nothing else, it gets attention. A big front page picture of Independence? Wow, talk about a good marketing day for Austal and General Dynamics, and I don't believe you can pay for that making it priceless.
Big pictures of new warships on the front page of Yahoo captures mindshare and interest, something the Navy doesn't get much of on a normal day.
When you build a ship that looks like nothing else, it gets attention. A big front page picture of Independence? Wow, talk about a good marketing day for Austal and General Dynamics, and I don't believe you can pay for that making it priceless.
Big pictures of new warships on the front page of Yahoo captures mindshare and interest, something the Navy doesn't get much of on a normal day.
Thursday, October 22, 2024
Best Navy Times Article Ever
Give credit to Phil Ewing, this is one hell of a phenomenal article. Throw in this Navy Times article by Andrew Tilghman and a pattern is developing.
There are several posts by VADM John Harvey over at his Fleet Forces Blog on some of the topics discussed in these articles. Presuming sailors want to be heard on the topic of optimal manning, there is a place to offer an opinion to the guy who appears to be working this problem as we speak.
There are several posts by VADM John Harvey over at his Fleet Forces Blog on some of the topics discussed in these articles. Presuming sailors want to be heard on the topic of optimal manning, there is a place to offer an opinion to the guy who appears to be working this problem as we speak.
What to do with Turkey?
Jerusalem Post contributor Caroline Glick asserts that Turkey has moved into the camp of radical Islam; she's troubled by a lack of Turkish support for Operation Cast Lead. The merits of this argument aside (and I think it's bat**** insane), what would the policy implications of such a shift be? This is to say, if Turkey really did join Tehran's camp (and, given Turkey's massive military and economic superiority over Iran, it would shortly become Ankara's camp), what policy changes ought the United States conduct? I must admit that the question is animated, in large part, by the last chapter of Wayne Hughes' Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat; replace Greece with Israel, and replay?
I'm an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky.
These Are Very Fast Ships
I'd be boasting this news too...The Navy’s second littoral combat ship, the Independence, finished its builder’s trials Wednesday, more than three months after first sailing from its Mobile, Ala., shipyard for its tests at sea.The AP reports the ship "sustained 44 knots during a four-hour, full-speed sprint," which is 50 mph for 4 hours.
The aluminum trimaran hit a top speed of 45 knots and kept a sustained speed of 44 knots during its full power run in the Gulf of Mexico, shipbuilder General Dynamics said in an announcement. It kept a high speed and stability despite eight-foot waves and 25-knot winds.
Last year when I was on USS Freedom the top speed while I was on the ship was 42.4 knots... on a sunny November morning that included almost no wind in the fresh, calm waters of Lake Ontario. I knew we were moving fast, but it really didn't feel like it. I imagine the GD version is very similar. If Independence is hitting 45 knots in builders trials with eight foot waves and 25-knot winds, even accounting this is salt water, it is still very impressive.
Speed is very sexy, and might turn out useful in some circumstances, but I'll be more interested to hear what the endurance of Independence is. In my book, speed is a wash over 40 knots, but endurance differences may be the deciding factor in the competition, and ironically, endurance was not a major point on the ship design requirements.
Wednesday, October 21, 2024
In Which I Respond (sort of) to Steeljaw Scribe on the Second Anniversary of CS21
The following is cross-posted at Steeljawscribe.
Many thanks to Steeljaw Scribe for getting the discussion started here. Several weeks ago, he reached out to me to see if I wanted to collaborate on some kind of a two-year retrospective in view of the second birthday of CS21; I declined, fearing that I was simply too close to the subject to be objective (which may now be confirmed with this post). As some may know, my last tour on active duty was to lead the team that put together the document, a tour I found fascinating and rewarding, mostly for the incredible quality of people I came to be associated with both inside the strategy team and in the broader, Newport and DC based strategy communities.
Steeljaw poses three interesting questions, but they are questions I am largely unqualified to answer, as thorough answers (in my estimation) presuppose in-depth knowledge of the Navy's plans for POM12. POM12 represents the first concerted effort on the Navy's part to program in the guidance set in CS21, buttressed by the presence of a CNO no longer in the first months of his job trying to find his way. I suspect if CS21 is going to have any influence, it will be reflected in POM12.
I make this statement largely due the lack of--as Steeljaw reminds us--the accompanying parts of what VADM John Morgan used to refer to as "the strategy layer-cake", which consisted of: the strategy itself, how it would be implemented (the NOC) and the resources required (a revision to the 30 year shipbuilding plan). Put another way, our three-legged stool is missing two of the three legs. This represents an institutional and bureaucratic decision on the Navy's part, and understandably serves to open up the one extant document to legitimate criticism. It does not however, obviate either the thinking that went into the strategy or the shifts that it portends.
I ask critics of the strategy a simple question; when you criticize the THINKING and the concepts of the strategy, what are you comparing it to? Exactly what did it replace? Prior to October 2007, what was the Navy's strategy? Come on now--one or two sentences. I think most folks who've read the current strategy can cite some version of the following--that there is a global system of trade, finance, information, etc that works to the benefit of the people of the US and other nations who participate in it, and that US Seapower--increasingly in a cooperative fashion--plays a unique and critical role in the protection and sustainment of that system. There you have it. Again--someone suggest in a sentence or two what it replaced.
Moreover, the strategy suggests a shift from the last named strategy of the 80's--which was clearly postured for the strategic offense--to a posture of the strategic defense--defense of the global system. It is a strategy of consolidation and defense. It is the strategy of a status quo power seeking to protect and extend its position within the global system. It answers the question "why do we need those ships strung out all over the world?" Previously, the answer was some version of "well, security and stability", which always begged the question as to why nations in that region couldn't do it themselves. The answer of course, is that they can't, at least not without our help. And that inability threatens the health and welfare of the increasingly interconnected world. Put another way, the global system demands the presence of the US Navy--just as it demanded the presence of the Royal Navy and the Dutch Navy.
While I have little insight into OPNAV's plans in POM 12, I can quite readily suggest how I thought CS21 would change the Navy. Firstly, I believe that CS21 represents a growth strategy for the Navy, and that as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan exact their toll on the national will, it would provide the intellectual basis for an expansion of the Navy. We didn't set out to make a strategy to grow the Navy--as a matter of fact, in one of my first days in the job, I asked the question bluntly of VADM Morgan..."what if our deliberations lead us to believe that the proper course is for a smaller Navy". "Write that strategy" was his answer.
With respect to specifics--I suspected that the strategy would 1) lead to the design of a small, lightly armed, mass produced surface vessel with considerable endurance that would serve as the backbone of the "globally distributed mission tailored forces" mentioned in the document and 2) MIGHT lead to a decision to move away from the DDX--as budget realities and operational requirements would eventually pit it against the CGX, a ship more attuned to the expanded concept of deterrence mentioned in the strategy and 3) (most regrettably) would lead to a loss of carrier force structure. Cutting carrier force structure seems odd in a "growth strategy", but reading the tea leaves, I believed some portion of that growth would have to come from within, and power projection and strike did not receive the same level of emphasis as in past strategic documents. In general, I thought we'd see additional investment on the low-low end (small combatants and riverine) and the high-high end (CGX and missile defense).
Second, I thought that the process that went into the production of CS 21 would be a repeatable part of the Navy's strategic planning process; that is, I thought (and advocated) that CS21 ought to be reviewed--that's right--as part of every POM process to make sure we got the entering presumptions right.
Third, I believed that CS21 would add some weight to the Navy's push to raise the prominence of its Language Skills, Regional Expertise and Cultural Awareness programs. I believed these competencies would be critical to a Navy out operating independently (but cooperatively) in places it wasn't used to operating.
Fourth, I believed that CS21 would resonate with friends, allies and partners alike, letting them know that not only were they important to us but that they were a critical part of our strategy. I believed that this emphasis would be recognized and acted upon by them.
Fifth, I believe the strategy presented the Chinese with an interesting dilemma; do they get with the program, recognize that the global system in place handsomely rewards their people, and pony up to the responsibilities of a first-rate nation in terms of contributing to that system's protection and sustainment, or do they remain neo-mercantilist free-riders, fattening their coffers due in no small part to the largess of the US Navy (and subject to its continued forbearance). While we did not name the Chinese in the document, we knew they'd read themselves into it.
I leave it up to others to determine how much of what I believed would be the legacy of CS21 has come to fruition. I hope this has been helpful to those interested in this matter, and I look forward to reading your thoughts on what I've said.
Bryan McGrath
Many thanks to Steeljaw Scribe for getting the discussion started here. Several weeks ago, he reached out to me to see if I wanted to collaborate on some kind of a two-year retrospective in view of the second birthday of CS21; I declined, fearing that I was simply too close to the subject to be objective (which may now be confirmed with this post). As some may know, my last tour on active duty was to lead the team that put together the document, a tour I found fascinating and rewarding, mostly for the incredible quality of people I came to be associated with both inside the strategy team and in the broader, Newport and DC based strategy communities.
Steeljaw poses three interesting questions, but they are questions I am largely unqualified to answer, as thorough answers (in my estimation) presuppose in-depth knowledge of the Navy's plans for POM12. POM12 represents the first concerted effort on the Navy's part to program in the guidance set in CS21, buttressed by the presence of a CNO no longer in the first months of his job trying to find his way. I suspect if CS21 is going to have any influence, it will be reflected in POM12.
I make this statement largely due the lack of--as Steeljaw reminds us--the accompanying parts of what VADM John Morgan used to refer to as "the strategy layer-cake", which consisted of: the strategy itself, how it would be implemented (the NOC) and the resources required (a revision to the 30 year shipbuilding plan). Put another way, our three-legged stool is missing two of the three legs. This represents an institutional and bureaucratic decision on the Navy's part, and understandably serves to open up the one extant document to legitimate criticism. It does not however, obviate either the thinking that went into the strategy or the shifts that it portends.
I ask critics of the strategy a simple question; when you criticize the THINKING and the concepts of the strategy, what are you comparing it to? Exactly what did it replace? Prior to October 2007, what was the Navy's strategy? Come on now--one or two sentences. I think most folks who've read the current strategy can cite some version of the following--that there is a global system of trade, finance, information, etc that works to the benefit of the people of the US and other nations who participate in it, and that US Seapower--increasingly in a cooperative fashion--plays a unique and critical role in the protection and sustainment of that system. There you have it. Again--someone suggest in a sentence or two what it replaced.
Moreover, the strategy suggests a shift from the last named strategy of the 80's--which was clearly postured for the strategic offense--to a posture of the strategic defense--defense of the global system. It is a strategy of consolidation and defense. It is the strategy of a status quo power seeking to protect and extend its position within the global system. It answers the question "why do we need those ships strung out all over the world?" Previously, the answer was some version of "well, security and stability", which always begged the question as to why nations in that region couldn't do it themselves. The answer of course, is that they can't, at least not without our help. And that inability threatens the health and welfare of the increasingly interconnected world. Put another way, the global system demands the presence of the US Navy--just as it demanded the presence of the Royal Navy and the Dutch Navy.
While I have little insight into OPNAV's plans in POM 12, I can quite readily suggest how I thought CS21 would change the Navy. Firstly, I believe that CS21 represents a growth strategy for the Navy, and that as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan exact their toll on the national will, it would provide the intellectual basis for an expansion of the Navy. We didn't set out to make a strategy to grow the Navy--as a matter of fact, in one of my first days in the job, I asked the question bluntly of VADM Morgan..."what if our deliberations lead us to believe that the proper course is for a smaller Navy". "Write that strategy" was his answer.
With respect to specifics--I suspected that the strategy would 1) lead to the design of a small, lightly armed, mass produced surface vessel with considerable endurance that would serve as the backbone of the "globally distributed mission tailored forces" mentioned in the document and 2) MIGHT lead to a decision to move away from the DDX--as budget realities and operational requirements would eventually pit it against the CGX, a ship more attuned to the expanded concept of deterrence mentioned in the strategy and 3) (most regrettably) would lead to a loss of carrier force structure. Cutting carrier force structure seems odd in a "growth strategy", but reading the tea leaves, I believed some portion of that growth would have to come from within, and power projection and strike did not receive the same level of emphasis as in past strategic documents. In general, I thought we'd see additional investment on the low-low end (small combatants and riverine) and the high-high end (CGX and missile defense).
Second, I thought that the process that went into the production of CS 21 would be a repeatable part of the Navy's strategic planning process; that is, I thought (and advocated) that CS21 ought to be reviewed--that's right--as part of every POM process to make sure we got the entering presumptions right.
Third, I believed that CS21 would add some weight to the Navy's push to raise the prominence of its Language Skills, Regional Expertise and Cultural Awareness programs. I believed these competencies would be critical to a Navy out operating independently (but cooperatively) in places it wasn't used to operating.
Fourth, I believed that CS21 would resonate with friends, allies and partners alike, letting them know that not only were they important to us but that they were a critical part of our strategy. I believed that this emphasis would be recognized and acted upon by them.
Fifth, I believe the strategy presented the Chinese with an interesting dilemma; do they get with the program, recognize that the global system in place handsomely rewards their people, and pony up to the responsibilities of a first-rate nation in terms of contributing to that system's protection and sustainment, or do they remain neo-mercantilist free-riders, fattening their coffers due in no small part to the largess of the US Navy (and subject to its continued forbearance). While we did not name the Chinese in the document, we knew they'd read themselves into it.
I leave it up to others to determine how much of what I believed would be the legacy of CS21 has come to fruition. I hope this has been helpful to those interested in this matter, and I look forward to reading your thoughts on what I've said.
Bryan McGrath
An Unaffordable Peacetime Capability
Professor Derek Reveron has an article up at the Atlantic Council's New Atlanticist blog titled Beyond Piracy: Maritime Security and Safety Challenges.The rise of piracy and the limits of naval power underscore that maritime challenges often begin ashore where security deficits exist. Yet, this should not lead to underlying condition paralysis when thinking about transnational challenges like piracy. As discussed during a joint maritime security workshop between the Atlantic Council and the Naval War College, the international community can generate local maritime forces through capacity building; encourage more prosecutions in Europe and the United States; support judicial systems in Kenya, the Seychelles, and Yemen; reduce the financial flows making piracy profitable; and support stabilizing efforts in Somalia.Can someone show me what it looks like to "generate local maritime forces" in a weak or failed state? What is the example, Iraq? Doesn't Rhode Island have a longer Coast Guard than Iraq, and aren't we still building that countries Coast Guard capacity?
Standing up a Coast Guards is a great idea, particularly in Somalia - so much so that Somalia claims to have recently stood a Coast Guard up. Ironically, the Somali Coast Guard operate from trucks, not boats; and they are limited to operating in Mogadishu despite suggestions they will actually operate in other places (supposedly including Somaliland and Puntland btw, which is politically not going to happen).
Fishing, piracy, environmental issues... these are problems that Coast Guards deal with every day. Should the US have the capability to stand up a Coast Guard in failed states like Somalia? Sure, it would be nice, but who pays for it? The Navy can barely afford to do the work asked of it by our government, and now they need to be able to build capacity of others? The idea of maritime cooperation is excellent, but it only works where cooperation already exists. It does not work where it is non-existent, and it never will until it is funded properly and elevated significantly in priority.
As it happens, we really have very little to offer failed states like Somalia looking towards the future. If you checked out the Atlantic Council conference, you'll see the problem. The US Navy's primary focus is on Maritime Domain Awareness as an information sharing mechanism towards building a better understanding of regional security problems. How exactly does MDA help the Coast Guard of a failed state that is likely to have massive corruption? Are we likely to share MDA information, even basic ship location information, with the Coast Guard of Somalia? Uhm, not without the shipping industry giving the US Navy the vocal middle finger objection.
Here is the bottom line. When it comes to strategic theory of naval soft power and diplomacy, the US Navy is really good at coming up with operational concepts for engaging existing partners. Global Fleet Stations, 1000-Ship Navy, Maritime Domain Awareness, etc... begin with a starting point of sharing responsibilities and pooling resources with existing, responsible states to achieve the same objectives. What we don't see are strategic theories that address building capacity where capacity doesn't exist, nor do we see strategic theories that address building partnership with countries that we lack partnership agreements with.
The US Navy has just as many "cooperative" options with the PLA Navy in the South China Sea as they do with the Somali Coast Guard in the Indian Ocean. Should the Chinese significantly contribute to a US/Japan sponsored East Asian MDA network with ship tracking information in the Yellow Sea and South China Sea, I'll stand corrected.
I do not believe the US Navy will be worth a darn building capacity with failed states or even cooperation with competitors without leadership supporting completely new strategic theories that focus on peacetime activity. Even then, we can't afford it anyway, because the Navy also needs completely new strategic theories that focus on wartime activity given the trend lines for money and resources. If the new administration wants to prevent war, then they need to add funding towards a fleet suited to meet the demands of a peacetime engagement. Based on the budget numbers I have seen for the future Navy under this administration, the future US Navy will be built solely to fight because there is not enough money to build anything else and meet the obligations that are being shifted to the US Navy. That is the political choice this administration is making, and only people who unrealistically believe that $2 billion, 9,000 ton warships can both be everywhere and do everything all the time will suggest otherwise. In the real world, it doesn't work like that.
Tuesday, October 20, 2024
The NYT Notices the Navy
A very rare New York Times/IHT article on China's aircraft carrier program:
That's rather an odd ordering of paragraphs; I suspect that the Philippines is concerned that the carrier program will be more than a symbol of power projection. In any case, it was a banner day for naval analysis in the NYT, as there was also a short piece on Admiral Robert F. Willard, new PACCOM chief:
China must buy jets, train aviators, build support vessels and learn the skills required to conduct air operations at sea. One such battle group costs about $10 billion, U.S. Naval War College researchers estimate.
While China’s commission of an aircraft carrier may cause consternation in Washington, it will not change the military balance between the nations because of the U.S. lead in numbers of carrier battle groups and platforms such as ultra-silent cruise-missile-carrying nuclear submarines, says Robert Ross, a professor at Boston College in Massachusetts who specializes in U.S.-China relations.
That reality may be lost amid alarm in Congress and among allies, including the Philippines, which came to the brink of conflict with China in 1995 over Chinese military installations on a South China Sea reef and will look for reassurance from Washington that defense ties remain strong.
“The carrier is a symbol of power projection, which will simply resonate in other countries as it resonates in China,” Mr. Ross said.
That's rather an odd ordering of paragraphs; I suspect that the Philippines is concerned that the carrier program will be more than a symbol of power projection. In any case, it was a banner day for naval analysis in the NYT, as there was also a short piece on Admiral Robert F. Willard, new PACCOM chief:
In the 1980s, Willard was the executive officer at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, also known as ''TOPGUN.''
Willard was a consultant and flight choreographer on the 1986 film ''Top Gun.'' He also portrayed a Soviet MiG-28 pilot who wore a black helmet and took on Cruise, who famously gave Willard's character ''the bird'' while flying upside-down above him.
I'm an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky.
China's Turn Off Somalia
The hijacking of the Chinese bulk freighter De Xin Hai represents the first large commercial ship hijacked off the coast of Somalia in awhile, with fishing vessels being the most frequently attacked type of vessels off the Seychelles. This may be an interesting story to watch, because China is playing it up in the media back home, at least initially.China vowed Tuesday to make "all-out efforts" to rescue a Chinese cargo ship hijacked by armed Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean northeast of the Seychelles.A rescue operation is not going to be easy, and may not be possible. The negotiations can be stretched out over periods of months, and one wonders how long before China pushes the news to the back of the last page in the paper, or off the paper altogether.
"We will continue to follow developments closely and make all-out efforts to rescue the hijacked ship and personnel," foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters, while giving no details of China's plans.
China sent three navy ships to the Somali coast in January to join world efforts to protect shipping in the region from pirates and has previously come to the aid of some stricken vessels, Chinese state media reports have said.
According to the European Union's anti-piracy naval mission, the ship was seized 550 nautical miles northeast of the Seychelles and 700 nautical miles off the pirate-plagued east coast of Somalia.
Then again, the French have been very proactive when their ships have been hijacked, and China may decide to take a similar approach.
One thing I don't understand. The ship was hijacked, so the PLA Navy sends all three ships? Aren't they escorting convoys up north? I get what they are trying to do... they want to prevent the ship from reaching the Somali coast where is can be resupplied. Still, it does seem odd to me that they would simply drop the activities they have been doing exclusively since sending ships to Somalia to react to 1 hijacking. One wonders if they got the assist from CTF-151, Atalanta, or someone else to watch their convoy while they rush off the to the rescue. For our part, we'd have been smart to volunteer to take over the escort.
The frigates Zhoushan and Xuzhou are in the region as is the support ship Fuchi.
Monday, October 19, 2024
Blog Update
Obviously the frequency of posting is down, and for my part, will remain that way indefinitely. The combination of work and family has consumed my time, and the blog is a lot of things... but in my world it is a hobby that loses to everything else.
I do intend to upgrade the blog comments in the near future, and thought I'd solicit an opinion.
1) Revert to traditional blogger comments?
2) 3rd Party comment system?
I'm leaning #2, but am open to opinions why the default blogger system may be better. There will be registration involved, I am tired of having to moderate comments by the kids who think this blog is a High School playground, and quite frankly, I'm tired of the comments that can do nothing but add a political statement on why the President is trying to destroy America.
People fail to realize the exactly same "This President hates America" nonsense was the same nonsense I had to put up with when we had the last President. Sometimes people have different priorities than you politically, and when that happens, the internet is full of blogs willing to entertain your political frustration.... so go post on one of those blogs.
I have had quite a bit of time to catch up on my reading during this down time though. If you haven't seen the CNAS paper on China (PDF), it is worth reading. Also, I don't know where all the good materials went on the new Naval War College website, but hopefully that stuff will come back. In the meantime, check out the Somalia paper that is available over there.
Also, the US Naval Institute has redone their website, check it out if you haven't, and finally check out this good read from the Army War College: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy (PDF).
I do intend to upgrade the blog comments in the near future, and thought I'd solicit an opinion.
1) Revert to traditional blogger comments?
2) 3rd Party comment system?
I'm leaning #2, but am open to opinions why the default blogger system may be better. There will be registration involved, I am tired of having to moderate comments by the kids who think this blog is a High School playground, and quite frankly, I'm tired of the comments that can do nothing but add a political statement on why the President is trying to destroy America.
People fail to realize the exactly same "This President hates America" nonsense was the same nonsense I had to put up with when we had the last President. Sometimes people have different priorities than you politically, and when that happens, the internet is full of blogs willing to entertain your political frustration.... so go post on one of those blogs.
I have had quite a bit of time to catch up on my reading during this down time though. If you haven't seen the CNAS paper on China (PDF), it is worth reading. Also, I don't know where all the good materials went on the new Naval War College website, but hopefully that stuff will come back. In the meantime, check out the Somalia paper that is available over there.
Also, the US Naval Institute has redone their website, check it out if you haven't, and finally check out this good read from the Army War College: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy (PDF).
Sunday, October 18, 2024
The Responsibility to Protect Sea Turtles
NPR had a mildly interesting piece this weekend on the efforts of the Mexican Navy to protect endangered sea turtles in Oaxaca. The turtles are valued on the black market for a number of properties, and would quickly disappear without protection. With protection, of course, value rises and incentives for poaching increase. This story isn't new; the Mexican Navy has been conducting the operation since the early 1990s. Nevertheless, it's an interesting example of what navies can do in service of tourism and of local economic management.
On a related note, I'm curious as to why the Mexican Navy has always maintained a relatively low profile. In general, Mexico has pursue a minimalist strategy in terms of defense; in spite of having a large and relatively affluent population, Mexico has typically ranked very low in terms of Latin American defense spending. Unlike the nations of the Southern Cone, Mexico never made an apparent effort to join the dreadnought race, or to acquire an aircraft carrier. Mexico has also been slow, for a country its size, to pursue purchase or construction of an amphibious warfare capability, although it does possess two old Newport class LSTs. The obvious explanation for this is the proximity of the United States. That explanation leads in two different directions, however. Has Mexico maintained a low defense profile because the proximity of the US means that Mexico has nothing to fear (from anyone except the US)? Or has the US pressured Mexico to maintain low defense spending? Any thoughts welcome...
...here is a conference paper on potential Mexican membership in NATO.
On a related note, I'm curious as to why the Mexican Navy has always maintained a relatively low profile. In general, Mexico has pursue a minimalist strategy in terms of defense; in spite of having a large and relatively affluent population, Mexico has typically ranked very low in terms of Latin American defense spending. Unlike the nations of the Southern Cone, Mexico never made an apparent effort to join the dreadnought race, or to acquire an aircraft carrier. Mexico has also been slow, for a country its size, to pursue purchase or construction of an amphibious warfare capability, although it does possess two old Newport class LSTs. The obvious explanation for this is the proximity of the United States. That explanation leads in two different directions, however. Has Mexico maintained a low defense profile because the proximity of the US means that Mexico has nothing to fear (from anyone except the US)? Or has the US pressured Mexico to maintain low defense spending? Any thoughts welcome...
...here is a conference paper on potential Mexican membership in NATO.
I'm an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky.
Friday, October 16, 2024
Rare Earth Minerals--A Strategic Weakness
Here's an interesting story from the Defense News website, detailing the almost total reliance the US has on other countries to provide it with "rare earth oxides" critical to the construction and development of advanced weapon systems and sensors. Much of the story reads like a marketing pitch for "Molycorp Minerals", but aside from that, I'm not sure whether I'm more concerned that we currently import all of our rare earth minerals, or that China currently controls 98% of the world's known supply.
I know, I know--talk about China here and you're a knuckledragging war-monger trying to justify force-structure. But even the most pro-China view must consider our almost total reliance on the Middle Kingdom for these materials troubling from a strategic standpoint.
Bryan McGrath
I know, I know--talk about China here and you're a knuckledragging war-monger trying to justify force-structure. But even the most pro-China view must consider our almost total reliance on the Middle Kingdom for these materials troubling from a strategic standpoint.
Bryan McGrath
CBO On Ballistic Missile Defense
On Wednesday Matthew S. Goldberg, CBO’s Acting Assistant Director of the National Security Division, testified before the House Budget Committee regarding the long-term implications of the fiscal year 2010 budget submission for the Department of Defense (DoD). The statement released with his testimony is here (PDF), and below is the CBO cost projections of the ballistic missile defense decision.DoD’s Plans to Change Ground-Based Missile Defense Systems. In April 2009 the Secretary of Defense announced plans to freeze the current number of ground-based interceptors in Alaska as part of the ground-based midcourse missile defense system that is intended to defend the United States against limited ballistic missile attacks from North Korea or Iran. The plan would continue funding for research and development to improve the nation’s ability to defend against long-range ballistic missiles. DoD also announced plans to upgrade six Navy Aegis warships to perform the ballistic missile defense mission at a total cost of $200 million. Moreover, on September 17, 2009, President Obama announced his cancellation of the previous Administration’s plans to field a high-resolution tracking radar in the Czech Republic and to deploy 10 ground-based interceptor missiles in permanent silos in Poland. In its place, the President proposed a four-phase plan. Phase One would rely on Block IA of the SM-3 missile, which would be deployed on existing Aegis warships. Phase One also would base an AN/TPY-2 radar in Europe to provide early detection and tracking of ballistic missiles if launched toward the United States. Phase Two would entail both sea- and land-based deployment of a more capable Block IB version of the SM-3 missile; Phases Three and Four would involve Block IIA and Block IIB missiles that are still under development. (Each block represents a major upgrade in capability from its predecessor.)Emelie Rutherford at Defense Daily (subscription only) has an article on the hearing, and picks up more details.
In a report published in February 2009, CBO discussed three alternatives to the previous Administration’s plans for ballistic-missile defense in Europe. Two of the three are similar to the current Administration’s revised plans. One alternative would use SM-3 missiles deployed on Aegis warships operating at three locations around Europe, supported by two forward-based tracking radar stations; another alternative would rely on land-based SM-3 missiles operating from mobile launchers located at two U.S. bases in Europe (Ramstein Air Base in Germany and Incirlik Air Base in Turkey), supported by two transportable radar units. The Administration’s new plan blends elements of these two options and encompasses both sea- and land-based deployment of SM-3 missiles.
For a sea-based concept, maintaining continuous coverage in three locations would require a total of nine ships (for each ship deployed, another would be undergoing maintenance and a third would be in use for training). CBO viewed the fiscal year 2010 request for $200 million to convert six warships as a first installment in pursuing an approach of upgrading existing warships (or proposed warships that would have been built to perform other missions) to provide missile defense. That approach would reduce costs relative to procuring new ships but would forgo the possibility of deploying those ships to other locations in the world where they could perform other missions. Alternatively, if new ships are needed, an option would be to adapt littoral combat ships for the missile defense mission with a specially developed Aegis module consisting of a version of the AN/SPY-1 radar and vertical launch system cells; CBO has estimated those ships would cost $650 million each.
In January 2009 (on the basis of the 2009 FYDP), CBO projected that total investment costs for missile defense would be at least $10 billion per year, peaking at $17 billion in 2018; unbudgeted costs could add another $4 billion annually. The Secretary announced in April 2009 that the ABL program would be limited to a single aircraft, that no additional ground-based interceptors would be deployed in Alaska, and that the Multiple Kill Vehicle program would be terminated. With those and other changes, the 2010 request for the Missile Defense Agency would be $1.4 billion smaller than the amount provided in 2009. Incorporating those changes, CBO now projects that total investment costs for missile defense would average about $8 billion annually through 2028, peaking at about $10 billion in 2014. The total savings, averaging $2 billion per year, include the specific savings from restructuring the ABL program as described above.
"So that's six out of what may ultimately be, in CBO's estimation, nine ships to do the mission," Goldberg said. "That's the lowest-cost way to do the mission...to take existing ships and convert them. The problem then is that you have nine ships dedicated to this mission, (they) can't do something else. That's the tradeoff."I have no feeling at all what the Obama administration is thinking about in regards to the next step with BMD, or if there even is a next step. I generally see the decisions made in ballistic missile defense so far as a step forward towards flexibility and better cost certainty, not to mention a transition towards functional systems instead of investment in futuristic systems. I also don't see any evidence more funding is coming to support the new ideas, but it is still early. It is interesting to see the CBO highlight the decisions so far have accounted for $2 billion in savings annually from FY11-FY28, roughly $36 billion.
Goldberg said if the Pentagon were to build nine new ships dedicated to the BMD mission, either DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers or Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) could be used.
Nine new DDG-51s could cost $19 billion. Taking nine LCSs and adding AN/SPY-1 radars and vertical launch-system cells would cost much less--approximately $9 billion, he said.
The Obama administration's new missile-defense plan brings some savings. Eliminating the previously planned radar in the Czech Republic and ground-based missile interceptors in Poland saves a total of $1.5 billion, Goldberg said. Yet he added the "biggest element that you put back in is the cost of your ships," which CBO estimates could run as high as $19 billion.
Here is part of the story. Nine new DDG-51s could cost $19 billion, as CBO says, but the question is whether nine new DDG-51s can meet the obligations of the proposed plan. This is the plan as listed on the White House website:
- Phase One (in the 2011 timeframe) - Deploy current and proven missile defense systems available in the next two years, including the sea-based Aegis Weapon System, the SM-3 interceptor (Block IA), and sensors such as the forward-based Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance system (AN/TPY-2), to address regional ballistic missile threats to Europe and our deployed personnel and their families;
- Phase Two (in the 2015 timeframe) - After appropriate testing, deploy a more capable version of the SM-3 interceptor (Block IB) in both sea- and land-based configurations, and more advanced sensors, to expand the defended area against short- and medium-range missile threats;
- Phase Three (in the 2018 timeframe) - After development and testing are complete, deploy the more advanced SM-3 Block IIA variant currently under development, to counter short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missile threats; and
- Phase Four (in the 2020 timeframe) - After development and testing are complete, deploy the SM-3 Block IIB to help better cope with medium- and intermediate-range missiles and the potential future ICBM threat to the United States.
The SM-3 is 21-inches in diameter and stands just over 21 feet tall, meaning it will only work on MK41 SL (Strike Length) VLS cells which is about 25 ft tall.. This brings up something interesting, because the brochures of the General Dynamics version of the Littoral Combat Ship Multi-Mission Combatant (PDF) was reported by DID to be outfitted with Strike Length VLS, while the Lockheed Martin version of the Littoral Combat Ship Multi-Mission Combatant (PDF) only comes with Tactical Length VLS, which are about 18.5 ft tall. The LCS option also requires reliance on external radar systems, as both LCS MMC versions use the SPY-F radar, unable to track ballistic missiles successfully for intercept.
I also wonder what CBO means by LCS AEGIS module, because that sounds like it can be swapped in and out. Somehow, I don't think that is what they meant. I think they meant AEGIS version of the LCS, or the LCS MMC.
The SM-3 Block IIB is brand new, so how can the CBO predict costs of something that doesn't exist? Suggesting cost savings on an non-existent defense system is the kind of math one can only find in government (businesses that do it go out of business). It is like giving me a quote for Cinderella's necklace or Snow Whites bracelet. The SM-3 Block IIB may be where the DoD replaces the unitary warhead with the Multiple Kill Vehicle warhead, which is great, but how the SM-3 Block IIB manages the potential future ICBM threat to the United States is a huge question mark. Up until now everyone has been saying that any interceptor the US Navy uses to intercept ICBMs will be too tall and/or wide for the MK41. The KEI, for example, was reportedly 40 inches in diameter and almost 39 feet in length.
What has changed to make the SM-3 of any known type capable of ICBM intercept? My guess, nothing. The only thing I can think of is the SM-3 Block IIB might be specific for working in the MK57, which can give the missile greater diameter and support the additional height/weight of a MKV warhead. Other than that, the Navy is going to need a new launcher to support a SM-3 IIB in 2020 capable of meeting the same capability projected for the GBI, which although unproven, was expected to reach IOC by 2015.
So what do we know? We know CBO expects the new ballistic missile defense program to save an average of $2 billion annually for the next 18 budget cycles. We know the two options examined include an option for nine new DDG-51s for AEGIS BMD at an estimated cost of $19 billion, and a LCS MMC option estimated at 9 hulls approaching $9 billion. With savings of up to $36 billion by FY 2028, there would still be cost savings, but whether capability is the same requires quite a bit of religion.
With $36 billion the Navy could set BMD for the next 40 years with political support. It could help pay for the CG(X) and new BMD radars that have been looked at. The money could be used to help upgrade the DDG-1000/CVN-21 X-Band radar systems (same radar on both ships) to integrate into the existing AEGIS BMD network. The money could be used to develop a baseline hull for both CG(X) and DDG(X) ships that streamline future BMD ship costs across the fleet. There is a lot that could be done with that kind of money.
What shouldn't be done is investment into more DDG-51s after FY 2015, if not sooner. If the Navy is going to build new ships for BMD, get ships with the new radars and enough power to do the complex calculations for BMD in real-time. I don't think the DDG-1000 hull is the answer, and I don't believe nuclear power is necessarily a requirement (although may be desirable), but both may be options worth looking at and learning from.
While I would like to see more information before making a judgment call, I think the idea of using a modified LCS MMC hull for BMD intercept is not a bad idea at all. For a long time the 21st century plan for Navy BMD was to get radar systems on capital ships, like aircraft carriers and cruisers, and use a bunch of smaller ships as distributed shooters to give greater protection over larger areas from ballistic missiles. The idea is still sound, but it only works if you get the radar side of the equation right first, and that has meant CG(X) for several years now.
Thursday, October 15, 2024
LCS as a C2 Node? Yep
When I discuss what I believe the LCS will be, my first point is that I believe it can be an outstanding C2 node for the littoral network. It has the potential to be the Command Ship of the inshore network, or COP. Consider what I mean in the context of this very interesting article from Aviation Week.Persistent short-range tactical surveillance in the littorals is hampered by the short masts and restricted lines-of-sight of unmanned vehicles. A new U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) initiative to develop a multicomponent system called Navy Expeditionary Overwatch (NEO) aims to correct this. It uses data relays and ground, water and airborne platforms, manned and unmanned, to provide surveillance, security and communications for tactical operations.Read the whole thing at Aviation Week.
NEO is based on existing technologies. Collaborating on it with the ONR are Northrop Grumman and the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, which will be its main user.
The intent, says James McMains, director of the ONR's Combating Terrorism and Navy Enterprise Integration Div., is for shore and other ground-based systems to share intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data from unmanned aerial and surface vehicles. Combining these capabilities will be a force multiplier.
"It's a multiple system [whose components] work well with each other and go a long way toward satisfying mission requirements on water and land," says McMains. Water coverage includes coastlines, waterways and near-coastal ocean regions.
People think I am nuts that I advocate putting a Marine Battalion on Littoral Combat Ships, Joint High Speed Vessels, and Corvettes but I still believe that is where part of the future is for the Marines. I believe the Navy needs to design most of its irregular warfare and low end threat capabilities to tailor, or match, the Marines and integrate bottom-up. The future of Marine operations won't be large scale, over-the-shore assault so much as rapid littoral maneuver operations. Getting the Amphibs, LCS, JHSVs, and building corvettes to bring together the NECC and Marines, and link that back to the big blue fleet out to sea is the future of littoral operations.
I think it is hard for people to see that future when we have over 200,000 troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I don't think we will be an occupational military force for several decades when Iraq and Afghanistan end. Instead, we will be looking for ways to achieve national objectives without committing to long term troops on the ground. That means hit and run, surgical strikes, modern versions of classic gorilla style raid operations, and learning how to engage influence locally in cities without trying to occupy entire countries.
The AEGIS Frigate Out East
So you hate the Littoral Combat Ship? Looking for that Frigate alternative? How about a frigate based on a modern, mature, evolved design? Look no further than South Korea.The Navy plans to launch six 5,600-ton "mini-Aegis'' destroyers between 2019 and 2026 in an effort to help facilitate coastal and blue-water operations, the service said Tuesday.South Korea expects to build three KDX-IIA hulls for the price of one KDX-III hull (KSX-III runs about $860 million per hull), with a KDX-IIA price coming in around $286 million each. As I understand it, all the system costs will pile on top of that. Ultimately, this will be a ship that costs South Korea about the same as we are spending on the LCS.
The plan was unveiled in a report submitted to a National Assembly inspection of the Navy at the Gyeryongdae military compound in South Chungcheong Province.
The medium-sized KDX-IIA destroyers equipped with SPY radar and close-in weapon systems will be a core part of the Navy's strategic mobile fleet led by 7,600-ton KDX-III destroyers, it said.
The mobile fleet is to consist of two KDX-III destroyer-led squadrons involving KDX-II or KDX-IIA ships, support vessels, new frigates and attack submarines. A new naval base to be built on the southern island of Jeju by 2014 will serve as homeport for the fleet.
It is a bit worrisome how much more bang for the buck the rest of the world is getting out of new Navy ships while we are stuck on a 70s-80s design Burke with questionable growth options for the future.
The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency: Part One - The Afghan Army
The Marine Corps University Counterinsurgency Leadership In Afghanistan, Iraq and Beyond: The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency transcript (PDF) is so good, I have decided to post the entire thing in four installments. I believe there are important insights in these discussions not only for Afghanistan, but in the context of US Navy discussions as well. The participants were:Bing West, Correspondent, The Atlantic
Col. Dale Alford, Institute for Defense Analyses, USMC
Col. William M. Jurney, US Joint Forces Command, USMC
Col. David Furness, Marine Corps Liaison Office, US House of Representatives
Held on Wednesday, September 23, 2024 at 10:30 at the National Press Club, Washington DC, part one is the presentation by Bing West.
We were going to, in this panel, move from the general to the very particulars. You consider this the panel that deals with fighting in the trenches, the tackling and blocking that happens upfront in the line. And I was asked basically if I would establish the context for the three battalion commanders.
Dave had one-one. But, you know, what you received about these gentlemen really, really didn’t tell you the reason that they’re here. I mean, Bill Jurney, when we were in Ramadi, a lot of people, including, me didn’t think you could get that place under control, and Bill Jurney was the battalion commander who did it.
And Dale Alford, of course, is a legend because Dale went out to Al-Qa’im, 250 miles from Baghdad, and that place on the Syrian border was just totally out of control and with one battalion he established not only control out there but managed to work with the tribes so that after he left it continued to be quiet. And everyone felt that on the Syrian border that just couldn’t be done.
And so you do have the opportunity this morning or listening to a few people whose credentials are just absolutely remarkable.
Concerning the context, I’ve been to Afghanistan four times, I’d like to just focus it on that and I was there in April and May and again in June and July and I was on about 40 combat patrols up north and down south and so I’ll just tell you what really concerns me.
It’s very, very simple - that every valley has a mountain. And all the mountains are controlled by the Taliban and the watchers are everywhere. No American or Afghan patrol leaves the wire without being watched and reported on the whole way. And I’ll tell you, H.R., that really concerns me because it indicates that there’s a substrata of that society that we’re dealing with, and if everywhere you go they’re watching you all the time, this is a big, big problem.
May I have the next slide, please? Now, the way in which we had been - next slide, please - the way in which - this is the Korengal Valley but this could be anywhere in Afghanistan.
The way in which all the firefights had been taking place up until the last couple of months was very simple. We were fighting apaches who remained very, very hidden. You’d never get a distinct target and generally the ranges were 400 to 600 meters. And this is in the Korengal and we’re firing at targets that were firing at us 600 meters away but you had to go down a valley and up the other side so there’s no way you could close with them. So we automatically were using air strikes.
And H.R. was talking about company commanders having these indirect fires at their disposal. Yes, every single patrol has it, but we now have a new tactical directive that says, knock off using most of it because you’re also killing civilians. And that leads to a very big problem about what takes its place.
And there’s another element about Afghanistan that concerned me greatly. May I have the next slide, please? Look at this photo. This is Ganjgal where the four Marines and the ETT were killed last week and eight Afghan soldiers. I’ve been in Ganjgal a couple of times. The 1st of 32nd is there.
And we took this picture because they said, look behind us. And as you’re moving along in an MRAP to go to this one small hamlet in a ravine and next to the mountains, the kids were coming out right behind us and putting the rocks behind us in order to trap us, just like that. We sat down. We had shurahs with these people in Ganjgal. We did everything according to the book that you’re supposed to do for counterinsurgency for the last two years and they betrayed the Marines and the Afghan soldiers when they went into that village and that’s why they killed them all.
So there are some hearts and minds that you’re just not going to win. The politics of each valley differ but every single battle space owner, every single battalion commander that we now have in Afghanistan, could come to this meeting, give you a map of his area, and take a red line and show you the areas where he cannot go without getting into a firefight.
And to show you what’s happened in the firefights and the biggest concern I have about finishing them - will you show this firefight, please? This is a typical firefight. This is down south.
(Begin video segment.)
MR. WEST: This is Bing West with the Afghan Army, British advisors and United States Marines in southern Afghanistan.
MR. : So you start suppressing all the - (inaudible) - across a certain ground.
MR. : You can hear the incoming.
MR. WEST (?): See, those were the PKM rounds, the machine gun rounds that hit just above our heads.
(End video segment.)
MR. WEST: Stop. If you can get it going, once you try to get it going again. But the point about this firefight was it was from one compound to the next - why don’t you replay it and see if it will just start - one compound to the next. They were firing RPGs. It was an open field. You couldn’t determine whether there were women or children in that compound, therefore you were stuck. You had one or two options. You either withdrew or you went across the open field. We withdrew.
And the dilemma that we’re going to be facing - may I have the next slide please if that doesn’t work? The dilemma that we’re going to be facing in the future is that the more we have constrained our indirect fires, which has been the principal way in which we were doing this, you leave the question, or two big questions dangling out there at the battalion level: How do you finish the firefights?
Right now we’re not finishing firefights. So we’re not doing damage basically to the enemy. The enemy isn’t doing damage to us because we have our armor. But we have now an attrition warfare. We don’t have mobility warfare. The Taliban run circles around us because they’re not wearing heavy armor. They’re in much better shape, incredible shape. And as a result, they hold the initiative. They decide when to initiate a firefight. They decide when to stop the firefight. And we react to them and we’re not finishing the firefights. So we’re not killing the enemy.
Now, are we arresting the enemy? Excuse me. I used to say detain or something. Now we say “arrest.” No. The Afghans arrest practically no one. And the average number of arrests for an American battalion is one person every two months.
So we’re not killing them and we’re not arresting them. And the blocking and tackling them that are fundamentally essential are right now really lacking.
So we can put in more troops, but my concern about this is, if we don’t find a way of finishing these fights, we could be having this conversation a year to two years from now and the Taliban would still be intact.
And that basically leads to the other issue which is where are we going? Basically, if we’re managing what we measure, we have some adjusting to do in what it is we think we’re going to be doing in Afghanistan.
And particularly - may I have the next slide, please? The question of what is our theory of victory. It seems to me if you read the assessment that I think that H.R. and others worked on - you read the assessment that McChrystal came out with the other days and you read it very careful, its theory of victory is not victory - it’s transition.
And when you look for how do we transition, it becomes a little bit fuzzy. And if transition is the name of the game, then the very best paper I’ve ever seen on it was written by actually Maj. Gen. Bob Neller when he was an obscure brigadier general out in Okinawa or something and had time to work it. It’s the best single paper that I’ve ever seen about how you transition.
But the problem we now have with the Afghan Army is very simple. We build it in our image. They’re all wearing armor. They’re all wearing helmets. They are no more mobile than we are. When you get into the firefight, they immediately turn to the advisor because only the advisor is permitted to call in the indirect fires. The minute you call in the indirect fires, you’re positioning the troops, you become the leader in the combat.
The Afghan leaders are absolutely the key to the success, but Mark Moyar’s - and that’s a good book he wrote - Mark has this fascinating section in the book where he interviewed something like 250 advisors. And they estimated that 65 percent of all Afghan battalions have poor leaders. And yet, our advisors have about zero effect on promotions in the Afghan system. So here I go.
I know that Pete Mansoor said, you know, Bing’s for these joint promotion boards but Gen. Petraeus had another way of doing it. I think, Pete, we’re out of time for being gentile in Afghanistan, and if we’re going to make a difference, I think we have to get more control over who’s in charge in the Afghan army.
The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency: Part Two - How We Think and Who They Are
The Marine Corps University Counterinsurgency Leadership In Afghanistan, Iraq and Beyond: The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency transcript (PDF) is so good, I have decided to post the entire thing in four installments. I believe there are important insights in these discussions not only for Afghanistan, but in the context of US Navy discussions as well. The participants were:Bing West, Correspondent, The Atlantic
Col. Dale Alford, Institute for Defense Analyses, USMC
Col. William M. Jurney, US Joint Forces Command, USMC
Col. David Furness, Marine Corps Liaison Office, US House of Representatives
Held on Wednesday, September 23, 2024 at 10:30 at the National Press Club, Washington DC, part two is the presentation by Col. David Furness.
Thank you. I’d like to thank Marine Corps University for including me on the panel and so I join two of my friends and distinguished Marine officers.
Mark Moyar asked me to talk about battalion command in counterinsurgency operations. That’s kind of a broad left and right lateral limit. So what I’ll do is I’ll kind of define it to actions that we took prior to going into combat and then those that we did while we were in combat.
Now, these are no new ideas here. There’s nothing earth shattering. Most of them were borrowed from peers that I respect, like the two gentlemen to my right, things I learned while I served on the staff of the 1st Marine Division in ’03 and ’04, and things that I read through self-study. So I tried to apply them in a dynamic environment, and so here are some of the lessons that I learned.
There’s the agenda. Here’s how I broke up the topic. Just a little bit of orientation. Here’s Baghdad, Fallujah, and Ramadi. So my experience was all based in southern Baghdad in ’05 when I was commanding officer BLT 11, part of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. And then in ’06 at a place north of Fallujah, a place called Karmah which - or “bad karma” as we’d like to refer to it. But it was all eastern Anbar province, western Baghdad.
As you drill down, here’s Karmah. It’s about 10 kilometers northeast of Fallujah. The other little red dots are small villages that were my principal population centers in and around the area: Saqlawiyah, Sitcher (ph), Ganether (ph), (Abu Ghraib ?). I had part of the northern Zadon which was kind of a no man’s land at times. But this is the area in ’06 that I operated in when I was attached to RCT-5.
Pre-combat leadership - we’ve all said, you know, what’s the difference between a leading battalion and conventional battalion and leading battalion, counterinsurgency? And I think it was covered well by the brigade commanders and I won’t repeat it.
I will say it’s a decentralized fight. Everybody agrees with that. And if you’re going to be successful in a decentralized fight, you have to operate on commander’s intent. We all - no one will dispute that. But how do you get people to understand intent and be able to use intent? And then who really tells you about that?
What I learned from watching Gen. Mattis at the division level, go down to the PFC level and just embed his ideas, his thought process, what was important to him down to the private. I said, okay. That’s what I have to do when I get battalion command.
So what we did was everybody’s got philosophies of command, philosophies of training, philosophies of this and that, and I’m no different. I came into command with them and spent a lot of time trying to craft a language that actually meant something.
But I handed those things out, had a one pager for the Marines and NCOs. I had a more complex, a little longer version for staff NCOs and officers. I gave them out. I had them read them, and then in groups of 20 platoon size, I went around after they had read them and we had discussions. We had (team meetings ?). What am I talking about when I say this? What does this mean? What am I telling you to do?
And you try to operationalize it because you want them to understand in so that when they’re in that point where they have to make a decision and no one’s around and it’s corporal so and so, he can do it. He knows what Furness would want him to do and that’s probably the only thing - if that’s the only thing he can remember, it’s something he can fall back on and hopefully it gets him through that difficult decision.
So I think that’s the most important thing that you have to do right upfront as a battalion commander. You’ve got to put your fingerprints on your unit right from the start, the first day you grab the guide on.
And once they understand it, then you reinforce that every day by what Gen. Krulak used to say “leadership by walking around.” You’ve got to get out of your office, you’ve got to get away from the computer and you’ve got to talk to your Marines, and sailors, and you’ve got to - where they work, what do they care about, and everything they do, you give them a little, that’s the way I want it done, pat on the back, or hey, next time you do it, how about his way, you’re doing a great job, but you have to imprint what you feel is important into their brain housing groups.
The next point, individual small unit discipline is the key in counterinsurgency. Gen. Zinni once said that elite units are better at counterinsurgency because they have greater discipline. And discipline is what’s going to give you restraint, which is going to give you discrimination in the use of fires, and it’s the bedrock on which everything else is build. So you have to instill it.
With our op tempo going 100 miles an hour, discipline can sometimes fall by the wayside because we don’t have time to correct it right on the spot, you know, we’ll get to that later. Well, you can’t do that.
I think you have to be - somebody said, well, if you could do anything to a battalion to prepare it for counterinsurgency operations, what would you do? I thought for a minute and I said, I’d put him through recruit training, all as a group, and let a bunch of gunnies with Smokey Bear hats just beat discipline into them for 13 weeks. And I think when you came out the tactics are fairly simple but the discipline is hard to instill.
The sergeant major - I had a big long talk with staff NCOs and NCOs about their role in helping me attain a level of individual and small unit discipline which would carry the day when we got into this dispersed dynamic environment.
And I also told them is, your discipline will be your hallmark and it’s the only IO message that as a small unit in Iraq you control. You control how you’re perceived by the population, the way you walk out the gate, the way you wear your gear, how you carry your weapons, they instantly perceive that and that’s the only IO message that you control as a small battalion in this big, wide, long war.
The thing I focused more on in pre-deployment training is NCO training because, again, I think Gen. McMaster said it: That’s where it’s going to be won - corporal, sergeants, lieutenants. That’s where you have to focus on because that’s who is going to be way out there on the edge of the empire, the pointy end of the spear, like we say. Those are the Marines that are going to make those tough calls and if they’re not trained to deal with that type of decision making, if they don’t have the requisite excellence and their weapons handling and their small unit tactics, they’re not going to be able to do that job.
So we ran a battalion in house through the PTP and all the things you have to do with that, we ran a battalion in house. We call it the Leaders’ Course because there were some lance corporals that were filling NCO billets that got the training as well.
But the bottom line was we wanted to control how Marines would be led in 11. We didn’t have enough quotas for the great sergeants’ course or the division squad leaders’ course. You just couldn’t put them through the pipeline fast enough so we did it ourselves. It was each company took a block of instruction and it was basically a five-week course. It could have been better. I’m sure it could have.
But it was good enough and it focused on prep for combat, how to give an order, how to prep a unit to get out the door and do a mission, how to inspect them, how to do a post-mission critique and learn from what you did right, what you did wrong. And so you’re teaching them the skills that then you’re going to demand that they use when they get out there in a very challenging environment in Iraq.
We talked about language training. What I did on my first deployment - Col. Greenwood got DLI instructors from Monterey to come in the battalion. We had about a 60-day emerging course, 30 days in Camp Pendleton and then in the trans-Pacific - when you’re on the ships, you’ve got nothing to do. We had about 100 Marines at that time in language training, and then, when we go to Kuwait, the instructors went back home and we have a fairly good training base.
What I changed the second time I deployed as a battalion commander is I gave everybody the DLAB so we looked at people who had propensity to learn languages as we picked those people. And then like Gen. McMaster said, I look for people who just naturally had a gift of gab because we wanted to add those talkers in every squad throughout the battalion.
And so, with those two elements, we picked 150 Marines. They did a 90-day immersion course because I had the contacts with the instructions from the previous deployment, brought them down to Camp Pendleton, and that’s all these Marines did. They were Marines that already had a tour under their belt so as far as going through the PTP, again, with a five-month turnaround I felt I could assume risk without putting them through it. I didn’t ask anybody. But they didn’t do anything but study language.
And some of them I was amazed at how quickly they picked up conversational Arabic. And could they write it? No. Could they read it? A little bit. But they could speak it enough to where they could act on it on the street.
And everybody said this is a fight for information or intelligence. Well, if it is, you’ve got to talk to people to gain it. If you talk to them in their own language they are much more perceptive to talk to you because they realize most Americans don’t speak Arabic and they’re kind of impressed when you do.
And it’s one of those things, to build report which is the first key to starting up a relationship, and relationships mean everything in this culture. It really helped and I think it paid significant dividends. And I would even do more Marines if you could and for longer periods of time because I think it was that important.
Culture training was the same as every other unit. The basic infantry TTPs - they’re important but the tactics are not so - they’re not complex. The decisions are complex, and that’s again, what you focus on. You use your training always as a vehicle to put people and test their decision making through TDGs all the time so that you can do this.
Intelligence collection you had to spend a lot of time training on because we don’t routinely do it at the squad, platoon, and even battalion level. So we looked at a process to do that.
Here’s how I organized to solve the problem, and the only thing I’ll talk about on this slide is H&S Company - 245 Marines in H&S Company: cooks, bakers, candlestick makers. But what I used them for is to reinforce my main effort because I formed provisional security platoons out of H&S Company because most of H&S Company’s duties are to life support for the battalion. But when you live on Camp Fallujah, you don’t need any more life support. You’ve got more life support there than you do at Camp Pendleton.
So I put these guys out in the fight and they loved it. Every Marine or rifleman, they’re actually doing fixed site security so my infantry Marines, when they come back from an eight-hour patrol don’t have to stay on guard duty. They can either do mission prep or sleep, rest, do something else. But it increased my ability to maneuver.
ROE - the thing I’ll talk about at this is it’s a commander’s issue, and I taught it. Now, the JAG was with me for any technical questions but Marines don’t like lawyers. They don’t listen to them. And they don’t want to be talked to the guy who they think is a pencil-neck geek anyway. Most of your Marines didn’t go to college. They don’t understand lawyers and they don’t want to be told about a very critical part of their decision making process, which is a law of armed conflict, by somebody they don’t respect. They want to hear from their commanding officer. And so that’s why I taught it.
We reset - every time we pulled platoons out to give them a shower, hot chow, we reset and re-taught LOAC, and we went over vignettes that we had either done well or things we didn’t do well while we were executing the mission.
The thing you have to remember is your hearts of your Marines will harden overtime. If you don’t understand that, you miss the point. These guys are on third, fourth tours. They’ve seen buddies get killed, blown up. They may have been blown up themselves and come back to duty. It’s hard to tell them to like these people but you have to talk to about it in a relevance to the mission and how - treating them well and using the law of armed conflict. It benefits them as far as their legitimacy, as far as their ability to execute the mission and actually save fellow Marines’ lives.
Combat leadership - I’ll say this is the big thing: supervise, supervise, supervise. You come out there. Once you’re in the fight, you have to get out of that CP and go see every unit. I had, at one point, seven maneuver companies, 30 platoons. It took a week to see everybody face to face. When I talk about two levels down I’m talking looking the lieutenant in the eye, having him brief you on what he’s doing. You know what he should be doing because you’ve given him the order, but you’ve got to go out there and see them actually do things.
Again, the non-kinetic focus - what I’ll talk about here is the kinetics are easy. We get that. The non-kinetic civil affairs CI ops, IO, working with civilian leaders, that’s the hard part. I’m not saying going to guns is not important - and I think Gen. McMaster said it well: don’t ever lose a firefight, pursue those guys until you got them, that’s shooting. No one gets a free shot, is what I used to say. I don’t care how far you’ve got to chase them. Chase them, run them down, and kill them if they choose to oppose you. But focus your efforts of your staff, the battalion on the non-kinetic aspect of the fight.
Partnership - you’ve to eat, live and sleep with them to be effective.
And I don’t care about that. I’ll get to the last slide. The last bullet is if you remember nothing else, I would say - we had all these signs that said, complacency kills. And I told my Marines that that’s really not true because it’s the divine right of the PFC lance corporal to be complacent. That’s his right. He gets to do that. After he has his first firefight, he’s going to be complacent. He’s going to get comfortable in his environment and it’s his leadership that mitigates that natural phenomenon.
If his leadership isn’t caring, active, involved, he will be complacent and he will get himself killed because you didn’t have the balls to do it right, get in his face, jack him up, and make sure he did it right.
So that’s my presentation. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
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